Year: 2011

It goes without saying that there are real consequences when the Democrats stay home and do not vote. The GOP has successfully eliminated VSA, the program that supports arts for people with disabilities, a program that I have been working with to develop creative writing experiences for young people with disabilities. Here is the note I received today from my friend Melissa del Rios announcing the end of VSA as we know it. I am deeply saddened by these developments and I merely with to point out that if you are a writer or academic who imagines that these cuts are not harbingers of what’s to come, you really need to have your head examined. Here is Melissa’s announcement:
Dear Colleagues,
The federal funding provided in previous years by the U.S. Department of Education to the Kennedy Center and VSA is being severely reduced in the coming months. With the loss of at least $9 million in federal funds, the Kennedy Center and VSA has realigned programs and staffing. For VSA, this means a drastic reduction in programs, in grants, and in staff. Nearly three-fourths of the national office staff of VSA have been let go.
I will let you know the status of VSA programs you have been involved with as things progress.
It has been a pleasure working with all of you, and I hope that our paths cross in the near future.
Sincerely,
Melissa Del Rios
Program Development Manager

Sent from my iPad 

Begin forwarded message:

From: Americans for the Arts <advocacy@artsusa.org>
Date: June 14, 2011 5:05:14 PM CDT
To: Stephen Kuusisto <stephen-kuusisto@uiowa.edu>
Subject: U.S. House Prepares to Eliminate Arts Education
Reply-To: Americans for the Arts <advocacy@artsusa.org>

June 14, 2011

Dear Stephen:

Last month, a piece of federal legislation named “Setting New Priorities in Education Spending Act” (HR 1891) was introduced for the purpose of terminating 43 existing federal education
programs, including Arts in Education. The Arts in Education program currently funds 57 active education projects around the country, and to date has supported more than 210 competitive grants serving students in high-need schools, as well as the affiliates
of the Kennedy Center and VSA arts education programs.
 
The Arts in Education program also provides critical federal leadership in supporting a well-rounded curriculum throughout our nation’s public schools.
 
On May 25, the House Education & Workforce Committee approved HR 1891 by a party-line vote of 23 Republicans to 16 Democrats. Americans for the Arts worked with Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ) and
other members of that committee who offered an amendment that sought to restore some of these education programs, including arts education, but that amendment failed to pass.
 
The full House of Representatives may vote on HR 1891 prior to their August Congressional Recess. The Senate education committee, however, is not expected to consider HR 1891 as Chairman
Tom Harkin (D-IA) plans on offering a separate, more comprehensive bill to reauthorize the Elementary & Secondary Education Act.

We call on arts advocates to contact their House Representative through our
customizable e-alert and request that they
oppose HR 1891 because it seeks to terminate the critical federal support directed to arts education. Don’t let this bill narrow the curriculum of our students.

Help us continue this important work by becoming an official member of the Arts Action Fund. If you are not already a member
play your part by joining the Arts Action Fund today — it's free and simple.

Click to remove your name from receiving e-mails regarding arts advocacy

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Sleepy college town. Summer. A few grad students coming in, looking frazzled–trying to finish those dissertations by August. Mostly the place is quiet. Two college aged guys (barristas) talk about Malcolm Gladwell–it makes me happy to see that there are still conversations about ideas among young men. This supports my thesis, long held, that boys will talk seriously only when they think no one will actually hear them.
I was also happy to notice that they weren’t using the word “like” –how wondrous!
S.K.

The Keebler Elf has been up to no good! I KNEW IT!

http://www.npr.org/blogs/health/2011/06/14/137175268/fda-warns-kellogg-over-contaminated-cookie-factory?ft=1&f=1001

Foreign Policy: If You Can See This, You're Lucky : NPR

http://www.npr.org/2011/06/14/137170009/foreign-policy-if-you-can-see-this-youre-lucky?ft=1&f=1001

Foreign Policy: If You Can See This, You're Lucky

June 14, 2011

Charles Kenny is a senior fellow at the Center for Global Development and a Schwartz fellow at the New America Foundation. The vast majority of global health problems do not consist so much of finding a cure as delivering one. Improving health in the world's poorest countries requires solutions that are cheap and simple to administer — and the good news is that these are increasingly available. For example, changing the standard response to diarrhea from saline drips (which require sterile needles and medical staff) to sugar-salt solutions (which require neither) has saved millions of lives that would otherwise have been lost to diseases such as cholera. Next up may be the scourge of poor sight. There are lots of people who can't read signs, watch TV, or recognize a face across the room without corrective vision. I'm one of the lucky few among them who can afford to do something about it; I have four optometrists within blocks of my office and enough money to buy glasses. But around the world, millions of people who should be able to see clearly are almost blind for lack of corrective treatment. The World Health Organization (WHO) estimates that about 150 million people worldwide who need glasses do not have them. In sub-Saharan Africa, only about 5 percent of people with poor eyesight have glasses. Skilled eye professionals are also extremely rare; Rwanda, a country of 10 million people — an estimated 1.2 million of whom need eyeglasses — has just 12 optometrists and ophthalmologists. On top of eye conditions that can be fixed with glasses, over 20 million people worldwide can't see because of cataracts. Cataract operations are not complex, but they do require a surgeon and a properly equipped hospital. And costs for even a straightforward cataract surgery in the United States range above $3,000 — or more than 50 times per capita annual health expenditure in Pakistan, for example. This lack of access exacts a heavy toll on the world's poor. A randomized trial in China suggests that giving glasses to children can have an impact on their performance at school equivalent to an extra half-year in class, which should come as no surprise to any kid who has squinted at the blackboard from the back row of the classroom. Children with poor vision in northeast Brazil are 10 percent more likely to drop out of school and nearly 18 percent more likely to repeat a grade. The WHO estimates the global cost of poor eyesight at $269 billion a year in lost productivity. Fortunately, innovation in eye-care delivery is reducing the requirements in terms of both financial resources and technical skills needed to correct vision problems worldwide. For example, the Aravind eye hospital network in Southern India has perfected a high-volume, low-cost technique for curing cataract blindness. The approach uses a locally produced replacement lens costing less than $5, which is inserted through a small incision into the eye. A surgeon alternating between two different operating tables can treat 15 cases an hour for less than $15 total (a cost covered for 70 percent of patients by cross-subsidy from the 30 percent of customers who are wealthy enough to pay for it). Some 200,000 cataract surgeries are performed each year by the Aravind network. Mass-production technologies have slashed the price of glasses as well. China now produces readymade eyeglasses for as little as $2 a pair and made-to-order pairs for $5 to $10 retail. In India, the multinational firm Essilor has funded vans that tour towns and villages offering free eye exams and selling prescription plastic glasses (which cost an average of about $5) and ready-made nonprescription reading glasses (as little as $1), a project that has proved profitable in its pilot stage. To overcome the shortage of skilled professionals, Kovin Naidoo at the University of KwaZulu-Natal in South Africa is working with community-based health workers to provide simple eye exams, which, combined with cheaper glasses, could considerably increase access to corrective vision. Naidoo's work might be made more straightforward by a new eye-test system developed by the MIT Media Lab, which replaces the traditional eye exam's complex set of corrective lenses and eye chart with a matchbox-size plastic device attached to a cell phone loaded with some simple software. The test takes less than two minutes and doesn't require a skilled practitioner; the snap-on plastic device costs about $1. Another way of getting around the need for skilled eye-care professionals is "adaptive" eyewear. New lenses filled with silicon oil can be adjusted by the customers themselves to provide corrective vision, and cost about $19 a pair. And a new technology using two lenses which slide across each other to alter focus costs as little as $4, and if production can be scaled up the price could be reduced even further. It is worth noting, however, that the global vision problem is not simply one of cost and a lack of optometrists. In East Timor, for example, a survey found that 55 percent of rural women would be unwilling to pay even $1 for a pair of glasses. The randomized trial of eyeglasses and education in China found that 30 percent of kids who needed glasses and were offered a free pair refused them; the authors suggest that perhaps their parents were operating under the mistaken view that wearing glasses further damages eyesight. But with marketing approaches that increase the demand for glasses, especially among young people, we can ensure that the whole world can finally see clearly.

Editorial: Real Cost Of Budget Cuts Goes Deeper
(Patriot News)
June 9, 2011

HARRISBURG, PENNSYLVANIA– Excerpt from Inclusion Daily Mental health professionals and the judicial system have formally weighed in. Jared Lee Loughner has been found mentally incompetent to stand trial in the Jan. 8 shooting rampage that killed six people and wounded 13, including Arizona Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. Loughner suffers from schizophrenia, delusions and major medical illness. The manifestations of this illness, the experts report, go back at least two or three years.

At the same time, legislators nationwide, at state and federal levels, are considering significant funding cuts to mental health services in an effort to balance budgets.

In Pennsylvania alone, 774 mental health services jobs are targeted for elimination. Ironically, should this budget pass, we can only anticipate a greater financial burden down the road.

When did we decide as a society that mental health services are icing on the cake of health care; that they are not vital to healthy individuals, families, school environments and neighborhoods?

Entire editorial:
Real cost of budget cuts goes deeper
http://tinyurl.com/3glzaec

– Posted using BlogPress from my iPad

Oscar Pistorius keeping Olympic sprinting dreams alive – David Epstein – SI.com

http://sportsillustrated.cnn.com/2011/writers/david_epstein/06/11/oscar.pistorius.worlds/index.html?eref=mrss_igoogle_sports

Double amputee Pistorius keeping Olympic sprinting dreams alive

Despite starting in Lane 1, Oscar Pistorius placed fifth in the 400m in 45.69.

It sounds like a Paralympic version of a barroom joke: guy with no lower arms or legs walks up to a guy born with no fibula in either leg and starts talking about running. No joke. The guy born without the fibulas is South African 400-meter runner Oscar Pistorius, the first double amputee to have a legitimate shot at qualifying for the able-bodied World Championships or Olympics. And that scene happened at Icahn Stadium in New York City on Thursday, as the 24-year-old Pistorius loosened up two days before his second race in America against able-bodied athletes. The man with no lower arms or legs was 23-year-old Andre Lampkin. Three years ago, Lampkin was a scholarship wide receiver at Cisco (Texas) Junior College, where he contracted bacterial meningitis, and had to have part of all four limbs amputated. As Pistorius changed from his walking legs, which look like normal legs and have a rubbery outer texture, into his running or “Cheetah legs,” the crescent carbon fiber blades on which he races, he patiently took questions from Lampkin, who got his Cheetah legs in February and now aspires to a Paralympic career. “Getting out of the blocks, you have to really lift your knees up,” Pistorius told Lampkin. “If you don’t, you’ll drag your legs along the ground.” When Pistorius ran his first 100-meter race in 2004, he had to start standing up. And because he has no ankle flexion and no toes, maintaining his balance while accelerating at the gun has been a huge challenge. In the 2004 Paralympic Games, he essentially fell out of the blocks in the 200 meters, before coming back to win. In every race he has run against able-bodied athletes, Pistorius has been the slowest out of the blocks — and he always will be. On Saturday in the Adidas Grand Prix in New York, against the toughest 400-meter field assembled this year, Pistorius had more than just the start to worry about. As the slowest seed in the field, he drew lane 1, a dreaded spot for most sprinters who disdain the tight curves. And the unsteady wind and constant rain seemed omens of ill portent for Pistorius. In the past, Pistorius has struggled mightily in rainy and windy conditions. In 2007, in a race in Sheffield, England, the rain gave Pistorius such trouble balancing that he ended up running outside of his lane and was disqualified. So this year, Pistorius’ coach, Ampie Louw, made sure to rouse his charge to practice every time he felt a drizzle. “My proprioception [his ability to orient his body] wasn’t always great in the rain,” Pistorius said Thursday, “but now I don’t mind the rain, as long as there’s no wind.” It seemed like a moot point during Oscar’s Thursday training-session when he made the comment, standing in 92-degree heat without a hint of a breeze. But come gray Saturday, it was 60 degrees and the rain drops were swirled by intermittent 10-15 mph winds. Not exactly ideal conditions for the only runner in the race with no toes to fine-tune the purchase his feet find with every stride. Nonetheless, Pistorius ran what might have been the best race of his career. Off to his customary slow start, Pistorius was seventh of eight runners for most of the race, until he roared down the home stretch to place fifth in 45.69. It was Pistorius’s second fastest time ever — he ran 45.61 earlier this year — and 0.44 away from the automatic “A standard” that would qualify him for the World Championships in Daegu, South Korea in August. In a 400-meter race, 0.44 seconds is a huge gap. But, judging from the rest of the field, Pistorius is closing in on the ability level it will take to make the standard. The entire field ran a bit slow on Saturday in the difficult conditions. After the race, Jeremy Wariner, the winner and 2004 Olympic gold medalist, estimated the soggy track and a wind that picked up while the athletes were on the back straight added about a half second to the finishing times. That’s probably a bit of an exaggeration, but Pistorius bested several athletes who have run well under 45 seconds within the past few seasons, making this his best competitive effort against able-bodied athletes. And, if Wariner is right and Pistorius is ready to run a half-second faster in good conditions, then he will be off to the World Championships. After the race, Pistorius said he spotted both his coach and manager “smiling from ear-to-ear, so that’s a good indication of how they feel about the race.” With at least five races left in his season, the answer to the Pistorius question is looking slightly more like a “when” and not an “if” he will eventually qualify for an able-bodied World Championships or Olympics. With his qualification, questions about whether Pistorius’ blades put him at an unfair advantage will inevitably resurface. Pistorius, who has never lost a 200- or 400-meter race against other amputee athletes, was banned in 2007 by the IAAF from competing against able-bodied athletes after a scientist the IAAF commissioned said the blades returned energy more efficiently than human legs. But the ban was ultimately overturned in 2008 by the Court of Arbitration for Sport when a group of seven scientists working with Pistorius marshaled evidence rejecting the energy-return hypothesis. Since then, Pistorius has been allowed to compete against able-bodied athletes and to aim for the Olympics. But the scientific controversy has not entirely abated. Eighteen months after he was cleared to compete, two of the seven scientists who helped get Pistorius reinstated split from the rest of the group and published data that convinced them that the lightness of the blades allows Pistorius to move his lower legs through the swing phase of his stride so quickly that he does not need to generate near the power of an able-bodied world-class sprinter. That study also found Pistorius’ mechanics are different enough from an able-bodied sprinter that it’s difficult or impossible to compare him exactly to Olympians. The analysis of his mechanics found when Pistorius runs, he holds his femur straight and uses it as a strut to compress the blades. Ultimately, he spends less time in the air and more on the ground with each stride than do his able-bodied competitors, and his body lifts off the ground less between each stride. Whatever the case, Pistorius is doing something nobody ever has. No amputee has ever held his own against the best able-bodied sprinters in the world, and no amputee has ever run as fast as Pistorius, who has been training for life on prosthetic limbs since before his first birthday. Plus, unlike Pistorius who is better at 200 meters than 100, and best of all at 400, most double amputees are the reverse. Now that he can run solidly in the mid-45 second range for 400 meters, Pistorius can realistically talk about becoming something one would think must be about the last job on the list when parents tell a double amputee child that he can be whatever he wants when he grows up: an Olympic sprinter.

Not that anyone cares but in general terms I prefer inflected languages to syntactic ones. Cage one.
Re: The Bubonic Plague, I’ve always wondered why the rat-borne fleas didn’t simply stay with the rats? Cage Two.
I love the human brain! I especially love the Thalamus which never gets the attention it deserves. Cage Three.
“The World is Too Much With Us” is Shakespeare’s best sonnet. I don’t care what you say. Cage Four.
Here’s to Hecademus, hero of the ancient academy! Much better than Lebron James. I don’t care what you say. Cage Five.
God how I love Bertrand Russell! Cage Six.
And the Stieler portrait of Beethoven. Love that too. Cage Seven.
Here’s to Dorothea Dix. Cage Eight.
Time to clean the straw…
S.K.

Not to suggest a grievance, but I’d like someone to buy me a $400 haircut. I only want one $400 haircut. I just want to see why it would be better than cutting my hair myself. I mean, really…
S.K.